In the first year of this government, ministerial changes were forced on the Prime Minister because of the need to appoint a new President and a Maltese commissioner to the EU. Even before that, Joseph Muscat had shown the necessary steel and ruthlessness – two essential qualities in any leader – to remove his minister for health.
Why then did he find it so difficult to rid his government of the Minister for Home Affairs and National Security, who had long shown himself to be a political liability, incapable and unsuited to high office?
As the board of wise men set up by the Prime Minister to buy himself a breathing space showed, the incident involving the utterly unacceptable behaviour of Mallia’s gun-toting personal driver and the bungled efforts by the Malta Police Force, at every stage and in every way, at handling it - forensically, legally and in public relations terms - was nothing short of gross incompetence and negligence.
Importantly, every person and institution involved in this sorry saga was answerable directly to the Minister for Home Affairs. Responsibility and accountability for the misleading information released by the government in its immediate aftermath and the shocking inefficiency displayed by the police force thereafter in the forensic investigation and (belated) arrest of the driver stopped at his door.
That it took the Prime Minister almost three weeks before demanding Mallia’s resignation showed moral weakness. Through his indecision, he found himself shackled to a political corpse, the ghost of which will haunt him for the remainder of this Parliament. Mallia’s cack-handed and dysfunctional performance in this key post had long been noted. He should have been asked to go much earlier.
Most worryingly for the country, however, is the debris he leaves behind. Of all the major institutions of the State, the Malta Police Force is the weakest. Attempts at reviving its fortunes since 1987 have consistently stuttered. Efforts at improvement and reorganisation have failed.
A radical shake-up of the police force is urgently required. But for this to succeed there must be the political will to make it happen. The best hope is that the Prime Minister sets up an independent commission, to examine the state of leadership, training, morale and organisation of the force and to make far-reaching recommendations for its improvement and to report within four months.
At the time of writing, it is not clear who will replace Mallia at Home Affairs. Changes to the Cabinet will in any case be needed when the nomination to the European Court of Auditors comes up for consideration shortly. The Prime Minister should positively welcome the opportunity to shake up his Cabinet by discarding some ministers who have now become embarrassments to him. And to do this as a way of salvaging his authority.
Anton Refalo – another lame-duck minister – may well join Mallia in the wilderness. Whether Elena Dalli, a competent minister administratively, is also forced out on ethical grounds remains to be seen.
These latest episodes of ministerial shortcomings raise serious questions about the qualities that distinguish an effective from a poor minister.
What are these qualities?
The ideal minister has a clear idea of what he wants to achieve and the courage, born of passion and commitment, to stick to his plan. He needs to leaven that necessary passion with the ability to stay calm under pressure, to be capable of inspiring the team of civil servants and advisers around him. Moreover, he should be willing to take advice, even if that is not to his political liking, and be able to distinguish good from poor advice.
The reality is that no country can any longer afford the political procrastination and institutional corruption that is often Maltese governments’ default mode
Above all else, his vital quality should be decisiveness and command over those around him. To procrastinate and not come to a decision or leave critical political judgements to his staff is the most damaging failing a minister can display.
Too many ministers tend to prevaricate and hedge when what is needed is decisiveness. They get blinded by the detail and spend time insulting their opponents, rather than setting out positive policies. It is all too tempting for ministers to become bogged down in crisis management or to be driven by media headlines – all too easy but a mistake.
People want honesty and authenticity but, invariably, ministers struggle to give voters the clarity they crave and deserve. There is too often an emphasis on tactics, not strategy, as ministers try to achieve headlines for a day, rather than manage the country for a decade. The reality is that no country can any longer afford the political procrastination and institutional corruption that is often Maltese governments’ default mode.
No minister needs to love the subject of the portfolio for which he is responsible. Nor does he have to be a trained professional within the specific area of policy. However, all ministers should acquire enough knowledge about their area of responsibility to be able to exercise good judgement to distinguish between the wheat and the chaff.
The perfect minister, in addition to all these virtues, should also be good at keeping the independent media on side. Being a good minister is about being adept at government and at politics – qualities which Mallia (and Refalo) patently lacked.
Further tensions arise, however, between the minster’s responsibilities for the departments in his charge and the need for a collective strategy in government. The Cabinet is the formal mechanism to secure this. But, in practice, my experience is that under a forceful Prime Minister – one who, like Muscat, commands a large majority in the House and in the country – Cabinet increasingly acts as a rubber stamp for decisions, rather than takes them.
Cabinet government should be a serious business. It is the pivot around which the country’s good governance turns. It is Cabinet ministers who make the decisions in government. Those decisions are often hard ones.
Cabinet is the place where the hardest ones are made. If the issue is not hard it should not get to Cabinet. In its weekly meetings, Cabinet should wrestle with issues that are too big to be made by individual ministers because they have wider international or domestic political implications requiring a more rounded and broader discussion.
Maltese politics has undoubtedly become more presidential in nature. We must be careful that Cabinet government is not replaced by prime ministerial government. There is a risk that the conjunction of circumstances that brought Muscat to power – a massive electoral majority, a united party, all-encompassing personal authority – is leading him down that path.
The Mallia case makes it salutary for him to recognise that this would be a mistake. Once the political circumstances change - as they can do dramatically, rapidly and unexpectedly, as we have just witnessed - then so does the centre of gravity within government.
The truth is that a Prime Minister is both a commanding presence and vulnerable. History has repeatedly showed us that he may dominate the political landscape today. However, this does not mean he is in secure and permanent control of all he surveys tomorrow.
The way Muscat now handles the Mallia debacle and his choice of Cabinet may well be seen as a turning point in his pre-eminence and authority as Prime Minister.